From a gambling point of view, YouTube will now be expanding its regulatory scope in order to tackle various trends in the online gambling sphere – inluding online casinos, sportsbooks and social casinos – including transactions which involve digital items that currently have monetary value.
Existing restrictions have now been extended to cover wagering with various digital goods such as cosmetics, NFTs and video game skins.
There will also be changes to social casino content. These games – where no real money is used to wager – will be restricted to users aged 18 or over. That is despite no real monetary transactions being made on these platforms.
Finally, the recent change YouTube’s policies will also aim to focus on graphic video game violence in a bid to age-restrict content that is available.
Indeed, this means that content which features realistic human characters that focuses on torture scenes or those of mass violence against non-combatants, will be restricted to those over the age of 18 next month.
YouTube has stated that they will consider various factors when reviewing content featuring graphic scenes.
- Duration – Depending on whether the scene is sustained or brief. Compilation videos, the duration of all clips combined will be considered.
- Realistic human characters – whether or not the violence is happening to someone who looks like a real human.
- Prominence – Whether the violence is zoomed in or the main focus of the scene.
Any content that is uploaded to YouTube before the policy changes and violates these guidelines could be removed without any prior warning.
What do these changes mean for content creators on YouTube
While these changes don’t come into effect for another few weeks, YouTube has urged content creators to use various editing tools to amend existing content before November 17.
Despite the expansion of both gaming and graphic violence policies, YouTube claims that most channels will experience little to no impact.
- Existing videos – Creators who have videos uploaded before November 17 that violates any of the guidelines mentioned above might be removed or age-restricted, although this won’t result in a strike.
- Making Edits – For those who have videos uploaded which are in-scope of these updates, necessary changes can be made to edit video descriptions using tools such as trim or blue before the deadline.
- Notifications – Should any creator have their content removed or age-restricted, YouTube will notify them by email.
This recent announcement comes seven months after YouTube’s latest policy which prevented creators from directing viewers to gambling sites through links, mentions or logos.
A month later, parent company Google began to introduce stricter country-specific certification requirements and this change in policy by YouTube ties in with these reforms from April 2025.
